[Distutils] Outdated packages on pypi

[Donald Stufft]

> On Jul 13, 2016, at 2:08 PM, Dima Tisnek <dimaqq at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'd rather see something similar to Linux distributions where there's
> a curated repository "core" and a few semi-official, like "extra" and
> "community," and for some, "testing."
> A name foobar resolves to core/foobar-<latest> if that exists, and if
> not some subset of other repositories is used.
> This way, an outdated package can be moved to another repo without
> breaking install base.


PyPI is unlikely to *ever* become a curated repository. The time and effort
it would take to do that, even if we decided we wanted to, is not something
that we have available to us.

Beyond that though, I think that would fundamentally change PyPI in a way
that is for the worse. One of the goals of PyPI is to enable anyone to publish
a package, whether they’re as well known and trusted as Guido, or some unknown
person from the backwoods of Pennsylvania. We try very hard to remain neutral
in terms of whether one package is “better” than another package and try to
present largely unbiased information [1].

It would not be particularly hard, technically speaking, for someone to
maintain a curated set of packages ontop of what PyPI provides already. This
would not need to be an official PyPI thing, but if one rose to some prominence
it would be easy enough to direct folks to it who want that sort of thing.


[1] To the extent that any information at all is unbiased.

—
Donald Stufft